Critique: Dallas Episode 62 – ‘Trouble at Ewing 23’

“Trouble at Ewing 23” is a decent “Dallas” episode until the fourth act, when everything falls apart. Or is blown apart, to be more precise.

The episode starts off strongly when Ray runs into Miss Ellie in the stable, where he thanks her for welcoming him into the family. Ellie is gracious, but she also expresses concern for Ray. “You’re a Ewing now,” she says. “That’s a lot to take on all at once. I know.” Barbara Bel Geddes and Steve Kanaly each do a nice job in this scene, which helps establish the special bond Ellie and Ray develop as “Dallas” progresses.

“Trouble at Ewing 23’s” other highlight: the scene where Pam drops by Cliff’s apartment unannounced, not knowing Donna is about to arrive for a romantic dinner. When Pam spots a bottle of imported wine chilling in the corner, she realizes Cliff is expecting a woman and teases him.

“It’s the first date,” she says. “Chinese on the second, tacos on the third. Funny how I know all this, isn’t it?” This is a cute scene, well played by Ken Kercheval and Victoria Principal, whose on-screen relationship is one of “Dallas’s” most believable.

Nice moments like these stand in contrast with the rest of “Trouble at Ewing 23,” which isn’t very good. By the fourth act, the show has abandoned everyone else’s storylines to focus on the subplot about a disgruntled Ewing Oil employee’s threat to blow up the drill site in the episode’s title, which J.R. shut in “A House Divided” to prevent Cliff from sharing in the profits.

I like the idea of showing how J.R.’s vindictiveness has unintended consequences – it turns out Gillis, the angry worker, wants revenge because he lost his job when the field closed – but the plot’s execution is lame.

Why does Gillis demand use of the Ewing jet to make his escape? Isn’t he afraid J.R. and Bobby will have police waiting to arrest him when he lands? When the field crew goes looking for Gillis’s hidden-in-plain-sight bombs, why don’t they find them? How long does it take to scour an oil field, anyway?

When the field finally goes up in flames, the special effects are spectacularly fake, but I don’t get too worked up about that. After all, this production is by Lorimar, not Lucasfilm.

Besides, by the time Gillis hits the detonator, my willingness to suspend my disbelief has long since disappeared.

Actually, I noticed that Gillis just says he wants a Jet, but he doesn’t specify Ewing. It’s Bobby who tells J.R on the phone to get the ‘Ewing jet’ ready. But either way Gillis was a fool to think he’d get away scott free. Does he even know how to fly a jet? He was just going to hold the pilot hostage? :p I believe the bombs were found, and Bobby mentions that the police can’t do anything because they don’t have a bomb squad. But they should of at least had Ray discover one of those huge things. I guess they didn’t need to keep searching after the proof was in the tool shed explosion.

The plot holes in that episode are big enough to fly a jet through. The other thing I couldn’t figure out: Who played Gillis? I scoured the credits and IMDb.com and couldn’t figure out which actor was him.

I guess this episode was intended to show that JR wanted to beat Bobby even if other people got hurt or his actions hurt Ewing oil in general. I liked Donna and Cliff in this episode. It was nice to have a minor romance that wasn’t a big epic deal. Those romances are so common in real life but not in Dallas. I was worried that Bobby was putting people’s lives in danger by not calling in the authorities immediately. It seemed fool hardy to have the workers looking for the bomb. Isn’t that what bomb squads are for? I wonder if this episode inspired the bomb on the rig on TNT Dallas?

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[…] episodic television can be, one week after “The Fourth Son” debuted, “Dallas” gave us “Trouble at Ewing 23,” which is easily me least-favorite Season 4 entry. I never know what’s worst: the cringe-inducing […]